Supply Chain Innovation

Syngenta

Supply Chain Innovation

The Fair Labor Association commissioned two independent external experts – Corinne Adam, an independent consultant, and Lynda Diane Mull, Executive Director and President of the International Initiative to End Child Labor – to conduct a task and labor risk mapping study of hybrid corn and sunflower seeds production in Argentina.

From the Syngenta website: Syngenta is guided by the conviction that value creation depends on the successful integration of business, social and environmental performance. Syngenta is committed to promote and maintain high standards of corporate responsibility worldwide in an industry that is essential to global agriculture and food production. The company acts in accordance with its Code of Conduct and its Health, Safety and Environmental Policy, which respect human rights and embrace internationally accepted regulations and the highest scientific standards.

More than one billion people worldwide depend on agricultural work to make a living. Field production is exhausting work and often among the lowest paid, where legally required minimum wages – let alone living wages – far too often remain elusive.

In December of 2014, DanWatch, a Danish civil society organization that monitors the corporate social responsibility of multinational companies, posted to its website the documentary “Seeds of Debt” by journalist Jens Pedersen. The documentary reported instances of exploitative high-interest money lending to farmers in rural Andhra Pradesh, India – including to farmers producing seeds for FLA affiliate Syngenta. Footage of an interview conducted with a Hyderabad-based agricultural research expert, who has assessed Syngenta farms on behalf of the FLA, went...

Rohini Chandrasekaran, FLA’s Agriculture Program Coordinator, recently visited several Syngenta-contracted farms producing hybrid vegetable seeds in India. Syngenta is a Participating Company in the FLA. One of the objectives of her trip was to learn more about the impact of Sygenta’s affiliation with FLA on the lives of workers. This is a guest post from Rohini.
I visited a farm in Giroli, where sweet pepper, watermelon, marigold, hot pepper, and tomato seeds are grown for Syngenta. The farm has been associated with Syngenta for the past 20 years. According to the farmers, their...

There are some interesting new postings on the FLA web site related to the FLA’s Syngenta project. As FLA groupies know, that project relates to the FLA’s unique application of its methodologies used in the apparel industry to agriculture. Several years ago the FLA was asked to address the problem of the use of child labor in the Indian seed supply chain. The FLA commissioned two independent studies to assess the risks and then, based on the result of these studies , developed a new approach to internal and external monitoring of labor standards. In addition to the child labor...

More than one billion people worldwide depend on agricultural work to make a living. Field production is exhausting work and often among the lowest paid, where legally required minimum wages – let alone living wages – far too often remain elusive.

The Fair Labor Association conducted three Independent External Monitoring (IEM) visits to assess working conditions at Syngenta’s seed farms in Thailand during the peak production period of December 2017 to January 2018. The assessments for the period covered about 130 acres of farmland located in the Phop Phra and Nakhon Ratchasima provinces of Thailand.

The Fair Labor Association conducted three Independent External Monitoring visits for the 2017-18 assessment year to review working conditions at Syngenta’s seed farms in India. The assessment visits took place during October 2017 to December 2017 and covered about 40 acres of farmland located in the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka. The team of external assessors visited Syngenta’s contracted farms producing seeds for sweet corn, tomato, and hot pepper.

In 2017, the FLA conducted three unannounced independent monitoring visits to assess working conditions at Syngenta’s seed supplier farms. Assessors conducted two of these visits in Hungary in July at farms producing sunflower and corn seeds, and one in October in Turkey during the sunflower harvest.

For the assessment year 2016-2017, the FLA conducted four Independent External Monitoring (IEM) visits and one Independent External Verification (IEV) visit to assess working conditions at Syngenta’s supplier farms in India. The assessments covered around 220 acres of farmland located in the states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana. In Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, assessors continued to find workers paid below the minimum wage (the subject of an ongoing pilot project by Syngenta), including some workers paid less than half the local legal minimum.